Beer Forum

Has anyone ever tried using the yeast at the bottom of the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale bottle to brew a beer? How did you do it?

Honestly, it's not worth the effort. It's literally just Wyeast 1056.
Save the yeast culturing efforts for harder to get strains that will provide more varied flavors.

Agreed. Don't waste your time, just use the commercial liquid version. You will get much better results.

I've done this a few times, on SNPA, SN Kellerweis, and Bells Amber yeast. I poured the bottle slurry from a SNPA into a 50 mL starter, to which was added 200 mL, then 500 mL, then 2L. This gave enough yeast slurry for the average ale (starters were stirred at 200 mL and beyond). It worked out great, as everybody else said just like 1056. It's more expensive to buy the beer than to buy the yeast ($8 vs. $6 here), but they don't give you a six pack when you buy a WL vial You use about 275g of DME with this method which is about $2.43 if DME is $4/lb. By buying the tube you only need around 100g DME to get the same amount of yeast, $.88. Also count on at least a week to get the starter from the bottle fully grown up (1-5 days for the first step to ferment completely, depending on the age of the sample, then 1 day per step after).

That Kellerweis strain, BTW, is most excellent.

For some reason I had it in my head that SN bottled with a different strain than their house 1056.

mookie1010 wrote:For some reason I had it in my head that SN bottled with a different strain than their house 1056.

Jamil has mentioned several times that they filter then add back the same house yeast for bottling, that's what I've been going by. Either way, the strain from the bottle makes a fine beer.

I cultured the sediment from a SNPA recently and it was deader than canasta. Made me wonder if SN had started pasteurizing their beer.

Charlie

I think there is such a small amount that the yeast themselves are just tuckered out sometime even in a gravity the size of their pale ale. How big was your first starter size?